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FSF Statement on SCO vs. IBM
tomdp writes "Eben Moglen, Law professor and general counsel for the Free Software Foundation, has written a statement about SCO's lawsuit against IBM."
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For some reason, I thought he wrote two of them ! I wonder why...
Am I the only one that read the first line as "The lawsuit brought by the Satan Cruz Operation ..." ?
Question is how broke are SCO?
nice to see such a clear, concise and complete dismissal of SCO's FUD. They kept it professional and straightforward, and with any luck, this'll defuse some of the tension surronding the entire situation.
Kudos FSF and Eben Moglen
Moreover, is it just me, or has the case really gone from something that is targeted at Linux (kernel) that many people worry about into just an internal dispute between IBM and SCO that not many really worry about anymore? I woudn't be suprised if the latter was true.
This article frames the issues in a way that cause me to consider that this lawsuit is a legal metaphor for a computer virus. Let me explain what I mean.
This article seems to confirm my suspicion that this lawsuit is a business strategy rather than a principled legal action. If it is also true they they themselves distributed the code under the GPL for which they now seek copyright protection, then maybe the GPL is really the target. Perhaps their lawyers believe that if they can make an argument that invalidates the GPL then they can indeed make a claim against IBM.
But, it is important to note that the exploit here would be of the copyright laws rather as a remedy for some improper action by IBM.
In this sense, the lawsuit is the legal equivalent of a virus. It is seeking to exploit a weakness in the code . Rather than doing something just and benevolent (as lawsuits are intended), this suit seems to seek to exploit a weakness for selfish gain or malevolent satisfaction.
Beyond that, the lack of distinction between GNU and Linux in their pleadings as described in the EFF statement is just lame on SCO's part. Lord knows, both Mr. Stallman and Mr. Raymond have done what they could to ring that bell. Some SCO investigator should have picked up on that.
The best way to do is to be.
Just as I can't function without my first cup of coffee in the morning, I can't get my moral outrage going without the first SCO story of the morning. What are we going to do when the case is thrown out? I guess there's always MS.
Some of this statement sounds just like what RMS was saying.
I still don't understand the significance of calling the kernel Linux and the overall operating system GNU/Linux. I mean, they aren't going to win just by saying that SCO is using the wrong terms.
I agree. This was a quality article. Much moreso than the interview that came out of FSF earlier in the week. He hit the points and did a pretty good job of explaining it. His explanation of why GNUs not "the Linux Kernel" and the whole seperation of terms fit into the points he subsequently made. So it didnt sound like beating a dead horse.
I think this will certainly put to rest any out there nervous about this case. Well, except IBM.
If I didn't know any better I would say that RMS is just trying to have a little press cover the FSF. Linus' statement made sense (remember he's that guy that made the kernel in question, and maintains the community effort the kernel is now).
I got a question, since RMS insists that Linux be called GNU/Linux ... and since I can compile and run nearly EVERY GNU program on an installation of SCO, shouldn't you make an SCO-FSF-2.txt and rename SCO to GNU/SCO?
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
To me the important point of that statement was the focus on the trade secret litigation. There is nothing about Unix these days that could be considered secret. Its doubly certain that there is no way sco could assert that it met the trade secret requirements, coke theyr'e not.
Just a refresher for trade secret protection to apply, everyone who comes into contact with the information, has to agree to a NDA, has to be informed that the information is trade secret, and has to be informed that the company will take action against them if they reveal it. The company further has to have regular trade secret audits to review procedures and make certain that the information isn't being improperly divulged.
Take an operating systems course in college ? Look at anything from GNU ? SCO going after IBM for trade secret infringement is laughable. Whats even funnier is they hired a lawyer who couldnt even get a decent judgement against microsoft for anticompetetive practices, after the introduced obviously fabricated evidence into court
Instead of arguing about SCO boing right or wrong, good or bad, what we should be arguing is wether IP is morally acceptable to begin with. When we don't do that, we are just arguing on their terms, jumping thru their hoops, playing the game by their rules. It is a sure path to disapointment.
Quote from FSF Statement:
"Moreover, there are straightforward legal reasons why SCO's assertions concerning claims against the kernel or other free software are likely to fail. As to its trade secret claims, which are the only claims actually made in the lawsuit against IBM, there remains the simple fact that SCO has for years distributed copies of the kernel, Linux, as part of GNU/Linux free software systems. Those systems were distributed by SCO in full compliance with GPL, and therefore included complete source code. So SCO itself has continuously published, as part of its regular business, the material which it claims includes its trade secrets. There is simply no legal basis on which SCO can claim trade secret liability in others for material it widely and commercially published itself under a license that specifically permitted unrestricted copying and distribution."
So instead of claiming they inadvertantly GPLed it, we should rather say, they only made it worse by distributing it themselves, and cannot claim any liability from other people doing the same.
SpongeBob: Hey Patrick, what am I?
SpongeBob lays down and acts dead.
Patrick: Uhh, you're dead.
SpongeBob: No Patrick, I'm SCO!
Patrick: What's the difference? Ha ha ha
SpongeBob: Ha ha ha ha.
It's Gnu/Linux, you bastards! Waaaaaaahhhhh.....
I'd throw in accusations that SCO is composed of communist vampires or that SCO's UNIX is just VMS with a new shell.
Just so you guys know, SCO does have a secret biochemistry lab working on a coffee-eradicating bacteria.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Most of what's come out of SCO is so self-contradictory that the only intelligent response is "What the hell are you saying?" Until they can nail down exactly what they're complaining about, there's nothing else to do but demand that they give the particulars.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Yeah baby!! Tell it like it is!
I say take all the SCO scum bags and castrate them so they can't pollute the gene pool with their stupidity genes.
If not than, then how about a public lynching or a burning at the stake??
We can stoke the fires with boxes of SCO software and books...
This isn't off-topic.
It's +2 (yes, only 2, it's not that good) funny!
I even sort of agree.
I mean, on some days we do actually get 4 SCO updates.
That would sound good: sco.slashdot.org.
I have been taught that the OS is the kernel, not the collection of programs running under it.
Now that the FSF claims the OS to be the kernel plus the GNU utils, do we have to change the definition? Is CS a democratic science ruled by majority? I know, I am picking nits. I have a whole basket full.
Once it stopped appearing daily on all the news sites around, everything would calm down a bit, and the case would generally be seen as a private law suit about trade secrets between two companies having a long history of cross-licensing agreements, i.e. nothing that extraordinary.
But I see that at least some news sites seem to have started understanding this already:
We unsuccessfully tried to ignore the SCO v. IBM fracas, mostly because ...
and
We know just how you feel (lwn.net commenting on the above quote from Linux journal...)
Please go away, troll.
IANAL , etc. .It is very very important for FSF to seperate (espicialy right now) the Gnu tools from the linux kernel .Sco is claiming that linux as a whole violates its IP (even if it does which is bloody unlikely) it is a stratigically sound move to say that the Gnu tools are seperate so they cant sue the FSF for violating their IP . Of course knowing SCO they would try anywyas :-)
Did you read the last line?
You have to provide the followig notice if you copy
any parts of this article!
Copyright © Free Software Foundation, 2003. Verbatim copying of this article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
The FSF is going to sue you!
* Introduction to topic (same old)
* WTF are they talking about, the kernel or all of Linux? I told you this would cause problems! Call it GNU/Linux or suffer the concequences! Now look what you have done!
* A bunch of shit we have already heard 10000 times.
NR
It's a sad day when the FSF agrees with those who would plunder the free software world, but with an arugment like that, I can see why they'd feel that way.
Ummmm... last I checked, IBM is fully compliant with not only the rules of Free Software, but it's spirit as well. They are playing nice with FOSS, and actually seem to grok what it's all about. Sure they want to make lots of $ from FOSS, but they understand that the collaborative process is the heart of the system, and if they hurt the OSS dev community, they hurt themselves. As well, the legal powers of the GPL itself are based in IP and Copyright Law - they must be defended or the GPL can be destroyed. As for morality, IBM has shown itself to be a friend of Free Software, no matter it's motivation, and friends help friends in times of need.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
it says "if". so you should say it WOULD be a sad day blah blah blah...
This article seems to confirm my suspicion that this lawsuit is a business strategy rather than a principled legal action. If it is also true they they themselves distributed the code under the GPL for which they now seek copyright protection, then maybe the GPL is really the target. Perhaps their lawyers believe that if they can make an argument that invalidates the GPL then they can indeed make a claim against IBM
Law suits imho (I teach media law) are far more often strategies than principled legal action. Sometimes the strategy is principled, and sometimes not. Many famous law decisions by the US Supreme Court were "set up" by one or even both parties to render a decision. So, in U.S. v. Haggerty (the federal flag burning case) someone deliberately burned a flag during a protest in order to bring the law suit. In another example, corporations are required by law to "defend" their trademarks, or risk them entering the public domain, so not that long ago Intel began to demand that a non-profit group that teaches yoga to young people in juvanile detention called "Yoga Inside" change their name because it violated the trademark "Intel Inside." Sometimes principles come out of law decisions, but lawsuits are strategies. My exmaples are two of the less henious strategies out there, but the law is a self-replicating virus even when its biproducts are principled.
Someone needs to draw the media's attention to this point: SCO itself has protected the Linux kernel againt any claim of infringement by SCO. Those 1500 companies SCO mailed letters to can rest assured that they have nothing to fear--SCO itself has released the kernel under the GPL and therefore SCO has given everyone in the world a license to use it.
They may have a case against IBM, but SCO itself has given a license to everyone else.
This needs to get more play in the press, and I think it's the most important point in the article.
The paragraph containing "As to its trade secret claims, which are the only claims actually made in the lawsuit against IBM, there remains the simple fact that SCO has for years distributed copies of the kernel, Linux, as part of GNU/Linux free software systems." concerns me.
/.", and after publication it was discovered that a certain eloquent essay was completely plagiarized. What happens?
What is omitted from this discussion, and what Eben certainly must already know, is that if SCO redistributes in good faith Free products that it receives from the community, then the illegal inclusion by a third party of material copyrighted by SCO does not in any way lessen SCO's claim to that copyright.
It's as if you sold your house "as is", and while you were in the office signing over title someone stole your car and parked it in your garage.
What's pretty obvious is that Open Source Software functions like an online magazine or bulletin board, to which malicious or incompetent users may illegally post copyrighted material. Once the violation is identified, the offending content is removed. The legal standing of companies reselling the content would be the subject of this suit.
Suppose O'Reilly published a "Best of
Amazing. I never thought of bogus quoting as a troll technique. The obviousness of the tactic is pretty astounding now that I see it, however. Since people seldom read the whole article, you could probably slip some pretty inflammatory comments encased in quotation marks right under the disbelief radar and get the community bile going. :)
Um, who are you quoting?
In a statement in late May, quoted in a CNET article on 28 May, Darryl McBride of SCO said that the SCO lawyers are are working on a contingency fee basis. SCO is not paying the lawyers anything. IFthey win, the lawyers get a big cut of the proceeds. If SCO gets counter-sued for barratry, I hope their lawyers are required to pay an equivalent percentage of the penalty.
If nobody buys their products, they won't be able to live long enough to see the IBM suit come to trial.
This isn't new. I've seen many trolls do it before. When I am in a trolling mood myself, I've even done it to pretty good effect.
Un-news
this is a nice innocuous comment, but +5 informative?
what is exactly informative about saying 'thank you'? if i said no thanks, i didn't like it i would be modded to -1 in no time.
once again, this shows what a joke slashdot moderation is.
"In most cases businesses aren't working for your best interests."
It took you this long to realize that? The whole point of a business is to make money. Although I do think acting like the GPL is the next messiah is childish. It makes you look like a teenage anarchist who hasn't grown up yet.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Yeah right.
Freedom is one thing - plain stupidity and to cause wasting resources of third parties forced to be looking into this issue is another matter.
In Germany - something similar to an injuction: "show what you have or shut up, you are causing damage to your business with this" smacked right into SCO's face and, due to their failed response, they pay penalty if they do it again. Silence is the result.
Why is this not happening in US?
About trying to pass a camel through the eye of a needle. From a legal perspective, this is what SCO has been trying to accomplish.
My rights don't need management.
I'm still looking for someone to start a class-action libel suit against SCO....
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
If SCO wins, which they won't, the best judgement they could ever get would be to remove said code from Linux.
If they claim that they did not know that their code was in it, then linux users and other Linux distributors can not be bothered because they too did not know it was SCO's code. The law cannot be more forgiving of SCO for its negligence than to the Linux users/distributors.
SCO should forget about getting anything out lincensing from Linux ever.
The case between SCO and IBM now has boiled down to a contract dispute, which has to do with interpretation of the meaning of derivative works. In any case SCO is doomed because they inherited the documents and can not claim to interpret what it was intended to mean. Since SCO did not draft those documents, expert witnesses from AT&T which drafted those contracts will clearify what they meant by derivative works and SCO would be screwed.
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
Uhm, what the hell are you smoking? Businesses primarily are supposed to value their own best intrests first, otherwise what is the fucking point in starting a business? The fact that some businesses seem to value their customers is only a side effect of the fact that for them that brings in the most profit.
Individual freedoms must superceded any rights that corporations have. It's time that we really restructure the way business works.
Incase you hadnt noticed, this was the "basis" for marxism, communism and other similar political views. While people value money, this is never going to happen. If individual freedoms supercede any group rights, then why should Unions be ok at the same time?
If this negatively impacts you, you currently have little you can do about it unless you have a lot of money.
Stop shopping there or doing business with them. Simple. Just because they have wrong you according to your views doesnt give you the right to wreak heavenly vengeance on them, any more than I have the right to punish someone who breaks into my house.
Corporations need to answer to the citizens of the world for all the injustices that they have wrought upon us.
Governments first. Then all political parties. Then religion. THose three groups have "wronged humanity" in more ways than corporations ever will. Corporations have never wrought injustices on citizens, they may not do stuff as you see fit, but then my neighbour dresses with no color sense. Should i hold him responsable and be allowed to make him answer for this?
In all instances where business negatively affects citizens, the business should be called to task and made to answer for it's wrongs.
Businesses are there to make money. Dont like that? go to some place where they arent allowed to. As i said earlier, they may not precisely follow your own moral rules, but the worlds a big wide place, and if i were you, id stop having a tantrum, and grow up. The worlds not perfect, and neither, it seems, are you.
The blitz of press about SCO leaves one very confused about all of this. This press release doens't seem to contain a whole lot that is new, and unfortunately does little to resolve any of the significant issues.
The IBM vs. SCO dispute appears to be something that Linux itself is not involved in except as a matter of evidence of violation of contract, unless I misunderstand what the initial lawsuit was about. (IANAL.) IBM does not have any control over the Linux kernel.
The involvement of free software, and I think the reason many of us are so up in arms, is certain statements SCO has made which seem to indicate it thinks a) it can treat Linux, and all the contributions made to Linux by people everywhere, as SCO property and b) that any Unix like system, of any type, also owes SCO for IP use. Those are the really dangerous thoughts, because a lot of us don't trust the court system to acknowledge common sense. The whole IBM thing is just a prelude as far as Linux is concerned - contract disputes between IBM and SCO are secondary. It's whether SCO thinks they can go after Linux that is the real issue. And the reason for the sound and fury is they seem to think they can, or at least they say that. Not to mention their statements that they don't believe the Linux kernel could be enterprise ready so quickly (whatever that means) without commercial software being included. How do they know that? The attitude of "well, we know you aren't capable of creating this, so if you have it it must be from us" is extremely insulting and arrogant. No one has ever put a bounds on what the free software community can achieve with any success. It's just too diverse.
The nightmare scenario seems to be this: A US Court grants SCO the right to all Linux IP, based on some bizarre reading of derivative work definitons. Consequently, if people in the US want to use Linux they now have to license it from SCO, despite the fact that SCO did not create most of the code in Linux. Our efforts will have essentially been stolen out from under us - most developers for Linux have worked in good faith to create a totally free system. If SCO is allowed to destroy that, the result is many years of work down the drain, because free software and open source both would sooner abandon Linux than pay SCO anything. Indeed, if SCO succeeds in such an attempt, Linux will become non-free. The effort will have to be recreated elsewhere, and if SCO's claims to all Unix like operating systems holds up it will have to be on something completely new. Plan9 perhaps, or Hurd, or maybe something totally new. But in any case, years gone.
The mistake SCO seems to be making is that they can grab Linux and make people pay for it. That is, of course, utter nonsense. People would sooner abandon it and start over. Linux is not special because of its technology. It is the freedom of Linux that makes it a powerful force in the software world. The technology is secondary. SCO controlling the technology would, by definition, destroy that which makes Linux worthwhile. We would be pissed as heck if they somehow managed it, but maybe just for that reason the rise of a new system without any IP ties would probably be all the faster. SCO is like the child who wants to hold a snowflake in their hand - the mere act of grabbing it destroys it.
What their motivations might be, there has been a lot of speculation. The obvious possibilities have already been mentioned time and again. SCO will not succeed if their goal is to make money from controlling open source software, because any software they control is not, by definition, open source. We will go elsewhere.
Do I think it will come to that? No. But the law is a strange animal, and one is never 100% sure what will happen. So the sooner this is over with, the happier we will all be. And whatever happens, SCO can forget about ever being a viable commercial business again. I would not do business with any company who uses methods such as those I have seen from them.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Dont worry, the moderators got trolled also... looked like an OBVIOUS bit of sarcasm to me, but what the hell, this is slashdot, domain of the ignoramous
In any case yes Linux = kernel, GNU is all the rest.
SCO is trying to taint the whole GNU movement. I do have to wonder what the FSF's status is on how the HURD is coming along. I have been to the site and saw some info on downloading the GNU/hurd, but was not sure what to install or how. Their docs seemed lacking.
I am getting tired of SCO and all their FUD spreadding and the complete lack of willingness to show what code is really tainted. It would make more sense to show everyone the code and the proof of who put it in there. Then they would have credibility. At this point any credibility is shot. It also does not help that they were (a) selling Linux that was 'tainted', and (b) once knows as Caldera (after the purchase), and lastly (c) they added "Linux Kernel Personality" into SCO's code, which is ON their web site.
My feeling is that after Caldera bought SCO, the code went both ways. SCO Linux. Also at this point IBM was NO longer obligated to SCO as they were now Caldera and their contracts were with SCO not Caldera. Yes contracts can be transferred, but IBM was not required to do business with Caldera. They did anyway.
I think in the end SCO will be as far with the UNIX code as ATT/Novell got, if they are lucky.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Individual freedoms must superceded any rights that corporations have.
No they must not. Corporations must follow the law they must not however bend themselfs over to every person who thinks something they believe in is a "right".
Anybody wondering what the "unfair compeition" part of the whole SCO lawsuit might entail? IANAL, of course, but I sort of wonder what would be considered unfair. Releasing secrets and code to Linux that belong to SCO would seem to be different offenses - would they qualify as unfair competition too, or might that be refering to creating a free system to do what SCO can do, and more? Would that be ruled unfair?
I've often wondered if someone wouldn't sue open source software projects based on the argument it isn't fair that they have to compete against a free product, and asking that no one be allowed to distribute free software on the grounds it is unfair competition. Utter nonsense, of course, but the "I have a right to make a profit" thinking in the US is so strong sometimes it makes me wonder if someday we will see it.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Actually there is a category for these stories. It's called Caldera. Let's not forget that that is who this really is. Much as I never really liked the Santa Cruz Operation, they are not the bloodsuckers that we're talking about here. It's Caldera. I wonder what name they're planning to change to next after they drag this one through the mud?
Most of the stories have been properly filed under that heading. This one actually makes as much sense as it is as there, however, since it's actually about a statement by the FSF counsel.
I have to agree with the other poster too, the moderation was stupid. Hope I get it in metamod.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
The best way to do is to be.
Regarding SCO distributing Linux, which is allegedly an admission that there is no infringement, SCO could claim that they simply "did not notice" that their proprietary code was copied until recently. I don't know how that kind of thing stands up in court. Is it reasonable to expect a company to check the entire code of every release to see if there are some trade secrets of theirs embedded? That will likely be the test IMO.
Table-ized A.I.
Stories to be posted daily:
1) Microsoft Security Hole
2) SCO story 1
3) SCO story 2
3) Web Development with PHP and/or Perl book review
4) Physics story that no-one understands but everyone pretends to
5) New Mozilla build
6) Repost of one of the above
Care to tell us about *YOUR* fetish for Micro$oft products??
An exact copy in case fsf gets /.'ed :-)'
What? Oh...
-dubber
FSF Statement on SCO v. IBM
Eben Moglen
June 25, 2003
The lawsuit brought by the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) against IBM has generated many requests for comment by FSF. The Foundation has refrained from making official comments on the litigation because only the plaintiff's allegations have been reported; comment on unverified allegations would ordinarily be premature. More disturbing than the lawsuit itself, however, have been public statements by representatives of SCO, which have irresponsibly suggested doubts about the legitimacy of free software overall. These statements require response.
SCO's lawsuit asserts that IBM has breached contractual obligations between the two companies, and also that IBM has incorporated trade secret information concerning the design of the UNIX operating system into what SCO calls generally ``Linux.'' This latter claim has recently been expanded in extra-judicial statements by SCO employees and officers to include suggestions that ``Linux'' includes material copied from UNIX in violation of SCO's copyrights. An allegation to this effect was contained in letters apparently sent by SCO to 1500 of the world's largest companies warning against use of free software on grounds of possible infringement liability.
It is crucial to clarify certain confusions that SCO's spokesmen have shown no disposition to dispel. In the first place, SCO has used ``Linux'' to mean ``all free software,'' or ``all free software constituting a UNIX-like operating system.'' This confusion, which the Free Software Foundation warned against in the past, is here shown to have the misleading consequences the Foundation has often predicted. ``Linux'' is the name of the kernel most often used in free software systems. But the operating system as a whole contains many other components, some of them products of the Foundation's GNU Project, others written elsewhere and published under free software licenses; the totality is GNU, the free operating system on which we have been working since 1984. Approximately half GNU's components are copyrighted works of the Free Software Foundation, including the C-compiler GCC, the GDB debugger, the C library Glibc, the bash shell, among other essential parts. The combination of GNU and the Linux kernel produces the GNU/Linux system, which is widely used on a variety of hardware and which taken as a whole duplicates the functions once only performed by the UNIX operating system.
SCO's confusing use of names makes the basis of its claims unclear: has SCO alleged that trade secrets of UNIX's originator, AT&T--of which SCO is by intermediate transactions the successor in interest--have been incorporated by IBM in the kernel, Linux, or in parts of GNU? If the former, there is no justification for the broad statements urging the Fortune 1500 to be cautious about using free software, or GNU programs generally. If, on the other hand, SCO claims that GNU contains any UNIX trade secret or copyrighted material, the claim is almost surely false. Contributors to the GNU Project promise to follow the Free Software Foundation's rules for the project, which specify--among other things--that contributors must not enter into non-disclosure agreements for technical information relevant to their work on GNU programs, and that they must not consult or make any use of source code from non-free programs, including specifically UNIX. The Foundation has no basis to believe that GNU contains any material about which SCO or anyone else could assert valid trade secret or copyright claims. Contributors could have made misrepresentations of fact in their copyright assignment statements, but failing willful misrepresentation by a contributor, which has never happened so far as the Foundation is aware, there is no significant likelihood that our supervision of the freedom of our free software has failed. The Foundation notes that despite the alarmist statements SCO'
Your complaints about being offended offend me.
Voiding the GPL would be mostly shooting themselves in the foot. The GPl is mostly a promise by the owner of the software in question that they will not sue you for copyright violation if you agree to -- and follow certain principles
If SCO were to step in front of the court and claim that they believed that the GPL was void. They would be arguing that they have been knowingly distributing millions of lines of other peoples' code without any binding legal agreement that gave them permission to do so.
Anything that they got from IBM, at that point, would be eaten up by copyright infringment suits against SCO.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I posted the original post. Yes it was a bit of a troll, but I firmly believe that corporations have gone too far in their quest for profit. The fact that the auto industry would sell unsafe cars and try to keep this from consumers is a perfevct example. When they are finally forced to reveal that there is a problem with their product, then do a recal and put the least amount of money and effort into rectifying the situation. That is morally and ethically wrong. By doing this, it would appear that they place the value of their corporate bottom line above a human life. The funny thing is that all you corporate supporters would easily cry foul with regard to abortion saying the "human life is god's greatest gift" like Reagan did back in the 80s. And yet, when a human life is put at risk by a product that a corporation sells, you do a 180 and say, "well... it would be bad for business if we had to resolve each problem for each individual. It will cut into profits." Sorry, but I think anyone that thinks that way is ghoulish as well as hypocritical.
Think of all the rotten things that businesses have done to consumers in the name of profit. All the dangerous chemicals they's been feeding us in our food and giving us as "medicine"... All the coverups to try and keep critical life saving information from reaching the public. If there is one thing that we all should be aware of as human beings, it's that we should put our fellow man far above profit and personal gain. If you can't do that, you have failed as a human being.
The stance of RMS and the FSF is irrelevant.
When SCO/IBM is talking about Linux in this case, they're talking about the kernel and nothing else, which is rather obvious from the few details that have been given.
The FSF own no kernel copyrights as far as I know, they're just using this stuff to trumpet out RMSs tired old message of "it's GNU/Linux not Linux".
Sometimes I feel it'd be worth porting over the BSD runtime environment just to stop having to hear these sour grapes..
SCO's lawsuit asserts that IBM has breached contractual obligations between the two companies, and also that IBM has incorporated trade secret information concerning the design of the UNIX operating system into what SCO calls generally ``Linux.'' This latter claim has recently been expanded in extra-judicial statements by SCO employees and officers to include suggestions that ``Linux'' includes material copied from UNIX in violation of SCO's copyrights. An allegation to this effect was contained in letters apparently sent by SCO to 1500 of the world's largest companies warning against use of free software on grounds of possible infringement liability.
First off I must admit that I do have a hard time following the whole affair.
Why are they warning companies away from free software ?. Surely the companies in violation are potential customers of SCO's ?. At best this is SCO trying to force a buyout by putting pressure on IBM's customers and other users of free software. At worst this is SCO blatantly leading a crusade against the whole notion and existance of free software and open source. Why would they be doing that ?, I guess this is the origins of all the thoeries that say that it is M$ that put SCO up to this.
Who modded THE parent quoted above up as insightful? If corporations were accountable to their customers, there COULD be modern society, goods and services as well as ethical and moral reponsibility to the consumer. It's all about balancing priorities. Profit is well below human life in the gran scheme of things. I'm sorry, but if a corporation is going to have that much influence over my life, they'd damn well better have my interests in mind. That's why I only buy from companies that I can trust and respect. There ARE alternatives to the bigger businesses out there. If you share my views, then patronize them.
Un-news
From the LaTeX-like quotes I guessed the article was written by an Emacs fanatic (hey, I'm an Emacs fanatic myself). I examined the source and bingo!, two spaces after each dot.
More interesting was the lack of closing paragraph tags and weird attribute style. Examining the headers I found the doctype:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
Man, someone's still writing HTML 2.0!
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics
Amen to that. They need to grow up over there. Especially since in THIS case it IS Linux under attack and NOT the GNU Project. To date all of the disputed features live in /usr/src/linux.
.iso of GNU 1.0. And if it is actually useful they can return to being the center of mass for the Free Software Revolution. In other words, lead, follow or get the hell out of the way.
Their problem is the fear of becoming irrelevent and I have some news for them. Shouting "call it GNU/Linux" several times a week is one of the fastest ways to make that fear come true. The Free Software community is a harsh meritocracy and of late about all the FSF has been producing is nonsense about GNU/Linux and not a lot of code or other useful work. Think about it; They have devolved into a political action committee. Not saying there isn't some good work to be done in that dept, but they are expending most of their political capital delivering bog standard screeds about "GNU/Linux" instead of advocating Free Software (marketed under the more popular Open Source brand, which they also expend a large effort undermining).
Most of the more useful FSF projects have been shifted to more capable hands. The center of mass of GCC and GLIBC have been with Cygnus/RedHat for years now and GNOME has been at Ximian/RedHat from day one, being FSF Projects in name only. And if you take those parts out of the body of GNU the whole GNU/Linux argument becomes silly since the rest is stuff most users never see anymore and could be replaced (admittedly with less capable versions, I love the GNU utilities regardless which platform they run on) from BSD. It would be more accurate to call it XFree86/Linux these days. (I don't think anyone objected a bit when Yggdrasil used to use Linux/GNU/X on thier login banner.)
If they want to be relevant again, they should get off their butt and finish GNU. Get an actual working HURD combined with the GNU toolchain and X, invest the effort (since they ran Debian out of the GNU project) of packaging it all into a coherent whole and put up an
Democrat delenda est
but he is, and probably knows a little bit about what he is saying. I think the fact that SCO as a software developer (funny thought I know) will be held to a higher standard of proof. They have been selling Linux products for years. Certainly they have the skill to examine source code.
To me it would be more like GM building a car with stolen parts in it. They can claim that some sneaky employee of Ford has been putting the crates of stolen parts in their assembly line for years, but I think they would have a hard time convincing me they didn't know about it or condone it.
80's band EBN-OZN
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
All your IP base are belong to us.
There can be businesses without corporations, such as sole proprietorships, partnerships, and cooperatives. Everone accepts that these entities are things. They have no 'personhood'. Corporations, things that have been given virtual 'personhood' by the law, are frequently monsters. Perhaps a thing that has 'personhood' is a thing that should not be.
That's Bigboo TAY! TAY!
"As a result, Novell is supposedly trying to figure out how to lob another discrediting hand grenade at SCO and claim that the code SCO is basing its $3 billion contentions on is actually in the public domain," LinuxGram says.
When you write "UDP/IP", you are referring to "UDP over IP". You are not implying that some entity "UDP" is the owner of "IP" -- "UDP" is not an adjective modifying "IP". The same thing applies to "GNU/Linux", which refers to the GNU system (glibc, gcc, and the GNU tools) running on top of the Linux kernel.
If the FSF were to have their own "Linux distro", they might call it "GNU GNU/Linux"; if they forked the kernel, they might call it "GNU Linux". As for "GNU/GNU/Linux", I don't know what that would mean.
I submitted this story to /. two days ago and it was rejected..
As it is, running a tiny shop using a couple of Linux servers I realized that 95 percent of what SCO is jerking off about with regard to trade secrets such as SysV, NUMA, SMP, etc; doesn't affect my little servers at all. And in the extremely unlikely event SCO gets a favorable declaratory judgement to tax the world for using Linux, we have other choices available to us (FreeBSD, Solaris), until the good people who put together Linux can rewrite the code.
Explaining the concept of free software to my family is very difficult, and even harder for me to grasp the concept. Yes, it is available for download free from the internet, but both of these servers at work and the two at home are products of over the counter purchases.
Inasmuch as the source sode is free available in purchased distributions, and if I had the knowledge I could customize or reengineer what I have already installed. It is about choices for operating systems and their components, and choices is what freedom is all about.
What is most important is that someone is making a profit at selling Linux, and as far as the main distros of Linux are concerned, they will continue to make a profit selling Linux, as well they should.
That doesn't make Linux unfree since I could easily download the software elsewhere, but it does mean that my support of RedHat (my distro) is ongoing despite this little dustup with SCO.
Dawn of the Dead
Not about the GNU/Linux thing being a bit of a tired argument, but that it was wrong to bring it up in this article.
It was important in this article to carefully distinguish between the kernel and a complete system (as compared to UNIX) to at least sweep one part of the SCO FUD away.
I would have said this is a valid way, legally, to get to the nub of the argument and to then deliver the knock out blow blow, indicating that they had then released the code under GPL.
Of course the GPL argument applies to everything anyway - but I think the smaller the range of code that the particular argument applies to, the easier it is for an impartial judge to see the validity of the argument.
One of the more prominent and widely-used distributions is Debian GNU/Linux, which clearly ascribes to the GNU philosophy in designing its system, not the more pragmatic Linus philosophy.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Individual freedoms are the basis for Marxism? And he has the nerve to ask what are you smoking? Thing is, I'm not so sure this guy is a troll; it sounds like he is just a moron.
Is it reasonable to expect a company to check the entire code of every release to see if there are some trade secrets of theirs embedded?
Yes, it is.
This isn't relevent to this case, but as a general law senario, consider this:
Let's assume a software vendor makes a great little program. They make millions on it. It brings fame and finacial freedom to all involved...
Only one problem. It's based on a wee bit of "IP" from someone who never OKed it's distro.
The owners find out. The new rich software designers didn't check the code. Who's at fault? Who's going to get that massive law suit against them, and lose all that finacial freedom. And most likely a first born or two?
As a business, expectally one so conserned about IP, it would be hoove them to check all source before they release a product.
Isn't IP fun.
The reason people have lawyers to do IP and "trade secret" work is because all they do is spend their time looking for any and everything that can be a infringment. The fact that their distro passed the law department, and that they released GPLed software that maybe have contained IP that SCO claims to exist makes said claim invalid, as they have now made the code GPLed by their own distrobution of it.
Of course, I mean the pregnant cow whose sale was voided by a judge, based on the theory that the vendor would have asked for a higher price when he sold it, had he known said cow was pregnant.
SCO hinted their intent to milk this case (which occured in the 1880s), to support their own theory that, although they distributed Linux for 5 years, they didn't really know what was in it, and they're now having second thoughts.
This is certainly an amusing story, and I'm wondering how much weight the cow will have, in front of the "due diligence" argument SCO will have to rebutt. After all, SCO (Caldera, actually) had 5 years and plenty of engineers to figure out what was in their distro, and failed to do so.
I believe that the cow won't matter, because SCO is only bluffing. They repeatedly threaten Linux users and vendors to frighten them, hoping that many of them will cancel or postpone Linux projects, and that a reduction in worldwide Linux business will incite IBM to settle.
As much as it pains me to say so, the ongoing consternation about the constant misuse of the word "Linux" when "GNU/Linux" is the more accurate term reminds me of the ongoing consternation about the constant misuse of the word "Hacker" when "Cracker" is the more accurate term.
Sorry folks, but the popular press and people talking it in hallways are going to be using the term "Linux" to casually discuss (and, alas, think about) free software from here on out. The trademark is out of the bag, as they say. Kleenex. Xerox. Linux.
There's nothing wrong with taking the time to explain to people who are honestly confused (and there will always be a great number of them, due to the language problems) the difference between hackers and crackers and between Linux and GNU/Linux, just be aware that it's like swatting mosquitos and DON'T RELY ON HAVING TO WIN that particular battle in the ongoing language war.
Yes, but if someone has used your copyright material without permission, they have broken the law. At the very least, you cannot be prosecuted for copying what you know to be the bits "pirated" from your own code. If the GPL stands up in a court of law, then the whole of their program may be subject to the GPL. And that means they will have to hand over the source code - or watch and choke back the tears while you recreate it.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
He he, that makes two of us...i submitted it yesterday and the same thing happened, but hey that's Slashdot right you can't always expect yout submission to be leapt upon. Some only become significant when other sheos drop into place, by which time they've already been rejected. But eventually most everything gets covered, I have great faith in the moderators and in the fact that not much of significance gets bypassed...not in the long run.
I think the point is that there can be a happy medium. Corporations do not have to be marrow-sucking vultures.. they can and should be good citizens, especially if they're going to have the same rights as actual people.
I think it's funny when people say "communism didn't work" or things like that, when we Americans get more from our government than Soviet citizens ever did. The Warsaw Pact countries were always ruled by Fascists that called themselves Communists or Socialists, so really, Communism has never really been tried in a major organized fashion.
In some countries, it's less than seventy years.
With just about everything written in the statement, there is no point in using the SCO situation as an out for explaining the FSF's position on the whole Linux naming crap, which I wish would just keel over already. Its is completely unnecessary and trivial at best to use quotes when mentioning Linux. IMHO, the FSF's and specifically Stallman's obsession with the whole GNU/ naming garbage, has significantly reduced the public's perception of the organization despite all the wonderful things that have come from the FSF. This statement would of been perfect if the FSF practiced a little restraint, and left out the "Linux is only a kernel" garbage.
Dear Sir,
I am not sure if you goal was to take the polar opposite stance of the post you are replying to but you have made just as grievous errors. Let us begin.
You seem to imply that valuing one's customers is only a side effect of the best interests of the company (which your point seems to be is to make money). This is a terribly cynical POV, however is the the view most companies take. Perhaps on the other hand a company should have a goal of making profit but not have it be the blinding exclusive goal.
Point 2. I am not sure what book you got our definitions from but just generally one does not associate strong personal freedoms with Marxism and communism. Unless you are look only at the alleged 'anti- private business/ownership' angle. Of course both of those are in the theory. As we all know the practice of those philosophies turned out different. As for unions, well (again ideally) they are supposed to advocate the rights of the workers.
Instead of driveling on here let me sum up. I believe that businesses (corporations) should have no 'rights' in the sense that individuals have. Corporations are artificial entities. We as people with rights can grant on to them (corporations) privileges, that may mimic the rights an individual has. However with all privileges we stipulate the responsibilities that that one has to meet in order to keep those privileges. Thus a business can run and make money for its owners, pay its employees, while not gaining the illusion that it it entitled to the rights and actions of an actual human being.
Pardon?
When are linux contributers going to sue SCO group and their parent company out of existance. They have slander and libled open source tried to steal patent rights. The true power of open source is the people as group through litagation wipe out SCO Group as remind of what power truly is.
Linus uses a very pragmatic philosophy - "the best tool for the job." Debian, by and large does not, and instead uses the Free Software Foundation's "the best tool for the job, as long as it's Free." Hence the Debian Free Software Guidelines, the name GNU/Linux, and the strong insistence on keeping the "non-free" portions of Debian optional and un-tied to the main part of the OS, which is wholly Free.
Furthermore, I'd argue that Debian is a good example of RMS's argument that Linux is just a kernel, and not the operating system. Debian is working on several alternate systems in which the major portion of the OS is kept the same, and the kernel is replaced. Thus Debian can be viewed as essentially a distribution of the GNU OS, with various versions including different kernels (hence Debian GNU/Linux, Debian GNU/HURD, and the in-discussion Debian GNU/BSD).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
SCO very interesting!!!!
`Linux'' is the name of the kernel most often used in free software systems. But the operating system as a whole contains many other components, some of them products of the Foundation's GNU Project, others written elsewhere and published under free software licenses; the totality is GNU, the free operating system on which we have been working since 1984.
Well, no, "we" haven't if the "we" is the FSF. As far as I know Linus has nothing to do with the FSF so the totality "we" have been working on is GNU and Linux, which in some cases constitutes a GNU/Linux system (as opposed to a KDE/Linux system or whatever strange xxx/Linux beasties embedded people produce). So, thanks for the RMS propaganda but we've already heard it (a lot).
But even if SCO could show that some portions of its UNIX source code were copied into the kernel, the claim of copyright infringement would fail, because SCO has itself distributed the kernel under GPL. By doing so, SCO licensed everyone everywhere to copy, modify, and redistribute that code.
This is bunk if taken at face value. Is SCO (or anybody else) supposed to audit every line of Linux (and by "Linux" I mean "Linux", the thing which is distributed in those tarballs with 2.4.21 etc on them) if they put together a distribution? Of course not and noone really wants unwitting inclusion to be binding, do they?
However, the fact that SCO continued to distribute after they announced that there was an alleged breach makes this a very grey area for them indeed. Once they knew there was a problem, why did they not at least take what little steps they could to prevent further distribution?
What carries it through grey and right into black for SCO is their announcement that their own customers will not be sued because they are "paying for the IP". BZZZT, Wrong answer!
There are three ways of looking at this:
All of these options wind up with SCO shares at a-dime-a-dozen, and good riddance; but the FSF statement is basically worthless despite coming to the same conclusion.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
There is a general idea that some people have that Linux is THE operating system. The fact of the matter is that Linux is just the kernel. Everything else (for the most part) isn't Linux. People need to be educated on that fact.
My favorite line from the statement:
"... SCO's public statements are at best misleading and irresponsible."
Duh! But not everyone understands, so thanks for saying that.
If the issue is the threat of lawsuits over intellectual property then corporate America and everyone else are actually in a better legal position using GPL'ed Linux than using Microsoft's products as a development platform.
Microsoft has a history of licensing third party code and patents in such a manner that still leaves developers exposed. Even going back to the LZH/GIF Unisys patents,
http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/lzw/
"Microsoft Corporation obtained a license under the above Unisys LZW patents in September, 1996. Microsoft's license does NOT extend to software developers or third parties who use Microsoft toolkit, language, development or operating system products to provide GIF read/write and/or any other LZW capabilities in their own products (e.g., by way of DLLs and APIs)."
Microsoft also licensed database technology for Microsoft's SQL server from Timeline Inc, under similar license terms as did with Unisys. This license did not grant Microsoft the right to sublicense to third party developers to extend functionality, in some cases even restricting the use of visual basic. Unlike companies like Oracle Corporation and others, Microsoft chose a cheaper option for the license which left third party developers, users of Microsoft SQL Server,Office and other Microsoft products at risk of being sued by Timeline Inc for violation of Timeline Inc patents. Timeline Inc asked Microsoft to upgrade to a similar license used by Oracle, but Microsoft refused, so the whole issue went to court and in 2002, Timeline Inc won.
http://www.timeline.com/021903PR.htm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/53/29419.html
While SCO has yet to provide any publicly available substantial evidence in their case against IBM and Linux, Timeline Inc has already won a US Washington Court of Appeal judgment against Microsoft in another contract dispute.
How many other cases exist where Microsoft has included third party technology in it products, but has also taken the cheaper licensing option and left developers and even users exposed to the threat of lawsuit? Due to the closed nature of the proprietary business model, how can third party developers even check?
Microsoft's products and platforms do not provide users and developers an absolute safe haven from the threat from lawsuits based on violations of intellectual property. Microsoft's EULA ( End User License Agreements ) provide the developer and end user with no protection against threat from current or future intellectual property lawsuits.
The Gnu General Public License (GPL) and Gnu Library General Public License (LGPL) are based on years of solid legal research.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html
Since The SCO Group has knowingly sold and distributed the GPL licensed Linux kernel and other components, it must by the terms of the GPL license, provide all those who receive the code from them an implicit license to use any intellectual property, patents or trade secrets which SCO owns and is used within the GPL'ed source code. That implicit license to that SCO intellectual property is also granted to anybody who subsequently receives the GPL source.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
The GPL only grants the right, for reasons of intellectual property infringement or contractual obligations, to stop distributing the GPL'e binaries and source code if the conditions are imposed upon you by a third party. Since The SCO Group claims ownership the intellectual property in question, it must grant all subsequent recipients of the GPL licensed source code The SCO Group h
If I ran the "Yoga Inside" program and I got a nasty, formalistic letter from Intel suggesting I cease and desist or face the consequences I think my response would be to write a reply conisting of only the words "bite me" and a signature.
It's not so much about the merits of the lawsuit itself, but about the public opinion statements SCO has been making, trying to affect the free software world in a really negative way, based on vague statement sabout the ramifications of this lawsuit.
As everyone knows, they went from "Trade secret" to "license violation" to "copyright violation" to alleging "patent" almost.
They went from talking about their secrets making it into linux, to pointing out it was actually code that was NOT their secret, but that they technically may have an exclusive license to, due to some wording in IBM's Unix license.
They are saying many confusing things, and backing it up with little.
Sco -vs- IBM is between SCO and IBM. Hopefully the rest of the world is smart enough to realize that the free software world is more than happy to obey the law, if only someone would tell them what they are doing wrong.
So it's good for people, lawyers, and organisations to put forward their own researched opinions as to what the ramifications of SCO's actions are, because the public needs both sides.
according to the FSF. But to many of us who have been using linux longer than the FSF has even had an opinion on the issue, we just call it Linux, and don't care to call it "GNU/Linux" because really, it has a LOT more than just GNU in it.
Everyone knows and respects the GNU tools.. they don't need to whine about it every chance they get, as if they aren't getting enough credit.
I mean, hey, GNU.. maybe if the HURD hadn't been vapor for 10 years, you would have beat linux to the punch, eh?
GNU/Linux has zero place since it is a nonsense name.
;)
What does GNU have to do with Linux as either a kernel or a complete operating system? Zero. There is no dispute that the FSF/GNU were not involved in the kernel, although this article states IBM assigned copyright to their S/390 work to the FSF.
As Linux the kernel matured people unrelated to the FSF took the freely available GNU toolchain, until then most popularly deployed on Sun boxes, along with material from BSD, XFree86 and the X Consortium, etc. and assembled it all into complete operating systems, creating a new breed of UNIX like operating systems, distict from proprietary UNIX, SYSV or BSD. FSF has yet to produce a complete OS so it is hard to say whether Linux (as an OS) is similar or distict from what will someday be called GNU.
But is I had to guess, if/when GNU ships it will look a lot like Linux, so then the GNU/Linux name might be ironicly correct.
Democrat delenda est
"This article seems to confirm my suspicion that this lawsuit is a business strategy rather than a principled legal action."
Wow, this is a surprise - we're talking about a corporation here, not a philanthropist. This is like saying 'the way this shark is circling around me confirms my suspicion that it wants to eat me and not be my friend.'
Corporation's motivations and ethical motivations are completely orthogonal to one another. In some cases, what's best for the company (& shareholders) is ethical. In some cases it's not ethical. Either way, the corporation will chose what it thinks is better for the bottom line.
"Rather than doing something just and benevolent (as lawsuits are intended), this suit seems to seek to exploit a weakness for selfish gain or malevolent satisfaction."
See above. Like a shark, SCO's motivations are not malicious (although the CEO appears to be a butt-head) - it's goal is to make money (for top executives first, shareholders second), and if they think they can do it by throwing around lawsuits, they will.
The FSF keeps whining about GNU and Linux terminology is starting to get tiresome. They always bring up the topic, no matter what the context is. Additionally, they occasionally seem like they would be ready to throw linux-the-kernel to the wolves in order to boost Hurd. They just don't seem to realize that damage to linux would be a huge blow to free software overall, since it would slow the development and nullify a lot of the momentum open source OS has.
Linux is attacked because it has the most marketplace momentum. If *BSD was at the same position, it would be attacked as well. Microsoft, Sun and the likes would just love to see hobbyists dabbling with *BSD, Hurd and other environments with no significant market impact (that your boss would call "toy" operating systems). *BSD is not a realistic migration path until it has mature & solid SMP, and driver support.
I dunno, I used to respect FSF, but nowadays the term "Free Software" (especially when capitalized) bears mostly negative connotations. It always brings to mind RMS, whining how he hasn't got all the respect he thinks he deserves. Let's face it, Linux could do just fine without GNU, apart from gcc. Userland utilities could be nicked from the BSD's, at least. FSF should get their act together, stop begging for respect/acknowledgement and realize that Open Source is what is going to bring out the world of truly Open Systems.
Insisting that everything should be Free is not very realistic either, as we have to live in the real world where non-idealists call the shots. Linux is a great, scalable system and other OSS components provide an open infrastructure that you can rely. Let people build their business on top of that.
We must just be happy that there is the Open Source movement to make all this stuff sellable to corporations (so that you can use a decent OS at workplace also, instead of just your home).
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Have you noticed when a Stallman-defender responds to this, it usually involves a personal attack and makes them look somewhat fanatical as a whole? It makes their message look fanatical as well.
"Shut up! You're just as bad!" Well, somebody has to point out how ridiculous it is. We're not going to just sit quietly as he makes the Linux community look crazy. If he wasn't so obsessively fanatical about it, you wouldn't be reading people complaining, now would you? Think about that.
Next.
"Sufferin' succotash."
your analogy fails because step 2 in your steps never occurred. Thus there would be no precedent.
The article says "A program written from scratch to express the function of an existing program in a new way does not infringe the original program's copyright."
What about the "Look-and-Feel" of Unix. Could that be a legal case for copyright?
GeekButtons.com is offering a SCO Sucks button!
the whole GNU/Linux argument becomes silly since the rest is stuff most users never see anymore and could be replaced (admittedly with less capable versions)
Nobody sees the Linux parts either. In fact, it's a whole lot less visible than the GNU parts. And the kernel could fairly easily be replaced by, say, a BSD one. By this argument, it makes more sense to drop "Linux" from the name than "GNU". (Not that I'm advocating this, merely performing a reductio ad absurdum.)
It would be more accurate to call it XFree86/Linux these days.
Why on earth is that, since the vast majority of Linux installations (note, I'm not a stickler for terminology) are servers that don't have X installed? I'm firmly in the "a rose by any other name" camp, and really don't care what it's called, but all these arguments about "it should really be X/ or Apache/ or KDE/Linux" or whatever are obviously specious. None of the stuff that people suggest for this role is ever a standard component of the system. Linux systems without these components are quite common; Linux systems without GNU code are as rare as tits on a bull.
I'm following this as close as most people here, but I seem to have missed the start time for this party.
When do the legal festivities kick off? I want to make sure I have PLENTY of refreshments on hand....anyone know?
1: Current owners and management get bought out by IBM at an inflated price...PROFIT!
2: Stock price zooms, insiders sell out...PROFIT!
It looks as illegal as hell, and I hope there are some people going to jail over this after all is said and done.
And let it be done quickly. The only winner at the moment is Microsoft, who competes with Linux on the desktop and in the server space.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Remember everyone over the years have been begging for a high profile test of the GPL ( and in effect BSD too ).. well people.. here it is.. lets hope it was worth it.
I really hope GPL is allowed to stand, as the ramifications are dire it if doesn't.
Regardless if SCO looses, the GPL could still be invalidated.
If SCO wins, it could be either direction for GPL, but them winning would create a bleak future for the industry in general. The parasites would suck the life out of the entire thing, as far reaching their claims are, if validated by a court.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The FSF point is that by distributing the kernel, SCO has NOT protected its trade secrets that it claims are at the heart of the violation by IBM. ... aren't.
Therefore the trade secrets
Governments first. Then all political parties. Then religion. THose three groups have "wronged humanity" in more ways than corporations ever will. Corporations have never wrought injustices on citizens, they may not do stuff as you see fit, but then my neighbour dresses with no color sense. Should i hold him responsable and be allowed to make him answer for this?
So corporations have have never "wrought injustices on citizens"? What a load of crap. It's pretty well known that many companies in the US pay "slave" wages to men, women, and children to do their dirty work in other countries, where they can get away with it. It is lesser known, but also true, that some of these corporations don't even pay slave wages, they just use slaves, or "forced labor" as it is called.
I would also have to disagree with the order in which you put the groups who have wronged humanity. Religion is by far the biggest perpetrator of wrongdoing. Religion has been around longer than political parties and longer than government. Religion has been the motivation for many wars and has been the motivation to form many political parties. Religion has been an underlying cause for so much strife that politics and government combined are merely a tiny fraction of the harm religion has caused.
Time makes more converts than reason
I am in total agreement. I wish more people thought like you. It's pretty sad when people think that a company's "right" to make money is more important than freedom and goodwill.
The people who still insist on calling the entire OS "Linux" are, imo, fanatics.
This is a demonstratable case of where harm is being done to the entire FS and OSS community because of the confusion between Linux the kernel and the GNU/Linux OS, which is at the core of what every distributor (like RedHat, Suse, Gentoo, Debian, etc) distributes as a distribution.
The only reason SCO is able to exploit the confusion between Linux the kernel and the "Linux OS" is because fanatics insist that because most people have always called the entire OS "Linux", we should continue to do so; despite the fact that it creates confusion between the kernel and the OS, while another name (GNU/Linux) ameliorates that confusion.
Now, I'm not saying that if everyone knew that Linux referred properly to the kernel, and GNU/Linux to the set of OS distributions, this lawsuit would have been prevented. SCO still could have sued IBM, and still could have launched this smear-campaign. However, they would have to specify exactly what they were referring to -- the kernel or the entire OS. They would not be able to exploit ambiguity and confusion to as great an extent as they currently are.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Attn World:
re: SCO's claims against IBM
Plbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbtt!
yours truly,
Eben Moglen
FSF
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
If you had actually bothered to read the article, you'd note that the current confusion is only allowed because no-one bothers to distinguish between Linux the kernel, and the GNU/Linux set of OS'. Your talk about the Linux kernel doing just as well without GNU software is irrelevant. There is currently *one* Linux-based OS that does not use GNU tools to form the rest of the OS, to my knowledge. The point is that credit should be given where credit is due. As all Linux-based OS' distributed today require you to install and use GNU tools to be in any way useful to even the most minimal of users, it is fair to call the OS' as a set GNU/Linux.
The FSF and RMS in particular have never asked to be given credit or partial for anything that wasn't created by them or partially created by them. Neither have they beared any ill-will towards the Linux kernel or Linus in particular. RMS has specifically said that the FSF wouldn't have even bothered to create the HURD kernel if Linux had existed when they started. So much for your arguments about them hating Linux. The reason they're continuing to develop HURD now is because it would be a shame to waste what has been developed of it so far, when it is pretty much near completion for a useable state. And maybe because the developers like doing it.
In fact, in this article, the FSF lawyers points out several reasons as to why these claims against IBM's contributions to the Linux kernel will fail. That is obviously explicitly defending the Linux kernel against attacks.
You also completely ignore the point of the FSF. The FSF is not about a development model. It is about an ideal of Free Software. The OSI is about a development model. The two happen to agree on the vast majority of their practical recommendations -- and thus are allies, despite having completely different reasons for supporting those recommendations. The point behind FS is not to "sell" it to corporations. Getting more people to agree with you by compromising the values of FS is not what the FSF is about. The OSI isn't about that either, but they have a different set of values.
As I said before, the two groups happen to agree with eachother on 99% of practical recommendations (so far). At the moment, any license that is accepted by the FSF is also accepted by the OSI, though that may not hold in the future. This is probably because the Open Source Initiative is a splinter from the Free Software Movement. Because the two agree on practical recommendations, they are natural allies (as the FSF has stated). Two groups that support the right to choose can be allies, despite one supporting that right for idealistic reasons, the other for practical reasons.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Santa Clara vs. Southern Pacific (1886) established corporate personhood in the US. A corporation has the same legal rights as a person in the US. However, I do believe there were more than 5000 years of successful business trading in the world without corporations. People will by and sell goods no matter if the is an artificial legal construct that allows individual to act as irresponsible as they wish or not.
Dying and waiting seventy years is considered in this case to constitute permission.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
The SCO lawsuit is brought to you by the same people who brought you the invasion of Iraq, and is built on just as firm a foundation of justifications. They copied our unix code = They will kill us all with WoMD
IBM does not carry responsibility for Linux, and has no direct ability to change it. If they are forced to change it but cannot, how will this case proceed?
That does leave IBM as the only possible source of damages, and if IBM can show that the IP in question was already in the wild or owned by IBM, that's pretty much the end of SCO's recourse. If IBM loses (and I think that's a pretty big if) I wonder if they'll try to reclaim some of their losses from the employees who made the changes...
Even more interesting is that IBM owns several companies that apparently had access to the UNIX source base. For example, they acquired Data General for their NUMA technology. Data General had a version of UNIX far superior (IMHO) to AIX or SCO but which shared the same original AT&T base. I don't know where Data General got their code base, but no mention of SCO ever came up while I was working there, nor did I see SCO copyright notices in any of the code I saw while auditing the C library.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If SCO Group actually distributed Linux with the code they alledge to have been improperly copied into the Linux kernel, then SCO Group has put itself in a double bind because they have been loudly protesting in effect that "our IP is in the Linux kernel because there is no intellectual property screening for the Linux kernel", etc. The question is: did SCO Group themselves inspect the Linux source code before they themselves distributed it, looking for IP violations? If so, why didn't they find the breach and halt distributions of their Linux, thereby keeping the GPL from kicking in against the alledged IP? If they did no IP inspections, then they are materially guilty of the *very same* practice that they accuse the rest of the Linux developers of: no inspections of the code for IP violations before distibution. Hence the the double bind. When you distibute something that you have the source code for, and could inspect freely, you have given your tacit approval. If there is SCO Group IP in the Linux kernel, SCO Group GPL'd when they distributed the Linux kernel. However, they answer this, they lose, and Linux wins.
--Slashdot: News for Turds. Stuff that Splatters.
This is an all or nothing attempt on SCO's part. The people behind SCO will walk away from the wretched hulk of SCO the moment they lose, or they will get filthy rich. Those people running SCO can't be harmed because because they are flinging their charges from behind the shield of the SCO corporate legal entity. SCO could be held responsible, but the people can't.
From where are the rights of actual human beings derived, if not from the same laws that grant similar rights to corporations?
SCO has launched at very little expense currently to themselves a successful FUD campaign. While the lawsuit may be expensive, considering lawyers fees, court costs, and other related items. The publicity campaign has been helped along by everyone protesting the actions being done by SCO.
I am looking at it from this perspective. The management types right now are going to think twice about using Linux and AIX. Think that is a ridiculous statement. Guess what, I have already been to three fortune 500 company meetings where questions were asked. IBM maintains many of the systems at these companies. And many of the companies have AIX systems currently. Some even have a long term plan in the works with IBM to upgrade in a couple of years to Linux based systems.
The questions being asked are some of the following types and yes I am paraphrasing:
What is the status of our current systems in regard to this issue of SCO claiming you have violated your contract with them?
How does this affect our long term plans?
What is being done by IBM to quickly resolve this issue?
Well the IBM reps answer these questions honestly. The problem is the FUD has already started to set in.
The management does not care about the truth in the long term. They care about the right now. And right now they are seeing a lot of press on the SCO issue and it doesn't seem to be going away. That is what will cause them to worry. They have to be able to tell their customers that they can service their needs and the customers are going to be the same attitude as the management. The customers want to know that the system that supports who they do business with is not in jeopardy. Right now it looks like it may be.
SCO may have no foundation for their claim, however before this is over they will have cost IBM money and they will have helped taint the image of Linux and other free software. And that is all they have to do.
FreeBSD is the prime example of this all you have to is look at the history of their lawsuit with AT&T to understand. FreeBSD would have had a much better market share today if not for that lawsuit.
While the SCO claim may have less validity than the AT&T suit. SCO has to only show one small line of code for them to turn around and say we were right.
Yes the line of code could be changed but by then the PR machine will have already dealt a heavy blow.
I think that this is going to drag out for a while and unless SCO is quickly put in their place the long drawn campaign will have been somewhat effective.
I don't want to rain on the parade and I'm defiantly not in SCO's corner but let's not be over confident here. There are some real questions that are going to be asked in court like:
Is SCO correct that some of its code was copied into GNU/Linux? If not then they immediately loose their case. End of story, turn off the lights when you leave.
Is it reasonable that SCO should check every line of code in a distribution prior to releasing it's contribution, to ensure that none of the code for which it has copyright rights over is included by other parties? If it is reasonable then again SCO looses because they did release GNU/Linux themselves and thus implied that the approved of GNU/Linux as a whole. If this turns out to be the case then SCO had better put some of the Microsoft money into a defense fund 'cause the counter suits are going to fly. However, I'm not at all confident that a Judge is going to say that it is reasonable. We'll just have to wait and see.
If a Judge deems that it is not reasonable that SCO should examine every single line of code then the next question will be: When did SCO become aware of the code's existence? I.E. Did they release a version of GNU/Linux after becoming aware. If so then again this implies approval.
I don't believe that SCO has a very good chance of proving anything and their actions appearing to be less than forthcoming raises even more doubt. But never be too confident when going before a Judge.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
You know, I am certain that if the FSF issued a statement about the impending death of all mindkind, it would be the same thing they have always said at any time about anything...
"It's GNU/Linux, dammit!"
I'll grant your points, but I'd like to throw in a different argument: BSD has created all of the above, EXCEPT a compiler, from scratch (mostly inheirted from 4.4 BSD), and it has nothing to do with the GNU tool chain. And the compiler is not a part of the OS by any definition I've ever seen. So one could take the linux kernel, combine it with a BSD userland (everything except the kernel), and it will still be linux, but it would not be GNU/linux.
Note the Debian is attempting the reverse, taking the FreeBSD kernel and combining it with a FreeBSD kernel, you would be justified in calling that result (if they ever finish it, progress seems very slow) GNU/FreeBSD.
That is a very insightful question. However as I said corporations have privileges and not rights as individuals have.., but lets move on,
In a number of cases they are based on religious teaching or spiritual beliefs of (classical) right and wrong. However in civil society (as its commonly used), these rights are codified into law by agreement amongst the members of the society. The codification of these assists in avoiding a 'sliding scale' of compliance. This is, of course, sadly the ideal situation.
Whats even funnier is they hired a lawyer who couldnt even get a decent judgement against microsoft for anticompetetive practices, after the introduced obviously fabricated evidence into court
I'm really tired of reading all of the flames of Boies regarding the Microsoft case and the Bush v. Gore decision. The tech-heavy, law-light readership of Slashdot seems to be unwilling to come to grips with the fact that Boies is a very talented attorney.
Boies has an extraordinary track record, both while he was at Cravath and after. The enormously high-profile cases he has taken can never be reduced to the skill of one (or even a group of) attorney(s) alone. The law deals with facts and other uncontrollable aspects that can serve to tank a case no matter how skilled the lawyer. Moreover, the law is an imperfect process at best.
Would you really be happy with a legal system that permitted attorneys to always wins, regardless of the facts of the case? While you consider that, also remember that Boies represented Napster in the 9th Circuit case (where he lost on dismissal, but did stay an injunction). Was the eventual loss Boies' fault? Or, maybe did some of the facts surrounding Napster's loose-cannon approach to copyrights and over-restrictive copyright laws have something to do with it?
Slashdot is understandably perturbed by the SCO deal. And, I believe that their case is utter crap. That's possibly a good reason to resent Boies for his choice in representing SCO. However, it's a far cry from claiming he's an incompetent lawyer.
I'd say their view of copyright law, software programming, and giving respect by calling things by their given name is considerably "grow[n] up". What you don't appear to understand is that SCO's language is purposefully unclear so they can leave their options open on what to sue for. The FSF was simply being thorough in their explanation by showing that SCO's language lead to a losing case.
No on both counts--their fear is probably closer to not having enough money to do all the things they want to do, and no you don't have any news for them. Perhaps you haven't been around long enough to know what contributions the GNU project has made to our community (ideological and programmatic). The political forces are at work challenge both the Open Source and Free Software movements and must be met by focusing our efforts on lobbying for political support, not just more code.
Getting a working GNU/Hurd system has been accomplished and looks to me like it is now in the stage where it is not ready for most computer users but it does boot. Improvements and extensions to the system (as well as getting the Hurd on a new microkernel) continue to arrive. This is all significant and needed progress but more code will not help stop harmful policies from being adopted under the cry of "harmonization" (such as EU adopting software patents or stopping the US Congress from extending the term of copyright again), nor will it stop various US states from adopting legislation that could (among other things) make it illegal to have a firewall unless the local telecommnications corporation says otherwise, or a host of other things that adversely affect our community. The FSF continues to speak on these issues and support Free Software development; the FSF is relevant nearly 30 years after they began.
Don't think that developing code must be done instead of working on other issues. All this and more needs to be done and is being done all at the same time.
Digital Citizen
How else can you expect the editors to consider the story worthy of Slashdot's high editorial standards?
/. if it weren't for the fact that the second copies validate the authenticity of the first ones.
Sheesh, we'd get all manner of rubbish here on
I believe that businesses (corporations) should have no 'rights' in the sense that individuals have.
To grant corporations rights is to allow individuals to retain their own rights when acting on behalf of corporations. Conversely, to deny rights to corporations is to deny rights to individuals.
Law is a body of abstract statement acting within the physical realm; Ultimately, law which applies to corporations bears upon human beings. Corporations are immaginary social constructs as non-material as the laws by which they are governed. Revocation of corporate rights in the abstract realm of law limits individuals in the physical realm of our existance. Revocation of corporate rights is revocation of individual rights in disguise.
By opposing corporate rights, Anticorporatists seek to deny rights to a specific group of individuals who hold views opposing their own: the representatives of corporations. Reborn in modern liberals, it is the age-old totatiltarian instinct to deny rights to those who think differently; Special rights for special classes, not equal rights for all.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Nice to see the FSF take a finger-wagging stance on GNI/Linux. They sure told us -- now look at the mess we're in!!!
Based on what happened in the AT&T / BSD case, I think there is a significant chance that the judge will have enough sense to see the facts and the case will come to a reasonable outcome. The BSD people had to make changes to (re-write?) three files, but the entire rest of the code base was janked out from under AT&T. We could end up seeing a lot more UNIX code entering the Open Source arena, if it really is found that SCO (like AT&T before it) is the one stealing copyrighted code.
On the other hand, looking at what happened in the DOJ vs. Microsoft case, we could be screwed....
Your Servant, B. Baggins
"Revocation of corporate rights is revocation of individual rights in disguise. "
I'm afraid you are quite incorrect. The 'revocation of rights' for corporations as you call it does not infringe or revoke the rights of the individual. As, you have correctly stated, a corporation is an imaginary construct we are real people can but any or all the limitations on them as we deem fit. To raise a corporation to the level of 'being', that we afford actual people implies that corporations are the equal of said individuals. Thus making a corporation more than it is, or we, people, less than we are.
"By opposing corporate rights, Anticorporatists seek to deny rights to a specific group of individuals who hold views opposing their own: the representatives of corporations. Reborn in modern liberals, it is the age-old totatiltarian instinct to deny rights to those who think differently; Special rights for special classes, not equal rights for all."
All I can say is HUH? Im not quite sure when this became an 'anti-corporation' argument. And I haven not suggested denying rights to any individuals. People who represent corporations have all the rights as an individual has. Being part of a corporation does not grant them some new superset of rights or privileges. Might I remind you that your attempt to 'labelize' liberals as totalitarians is not only currently false but also historically. Generally speaking those who wants equal rights for all people don't usually end up becoming totalitarian dictators. If you are wishing to advocate equal rights for all fine. A corporation is not part of 'all', they are not real, they do not breathe, they do not eat. they do not bleed or have children. Its an abstract construct concocted by humans. Thus human have the final say about what the privileges and responsibilities we foist upon such entities. If you wish to advocate that a non-being has the same level of 'being-ness' as you do, feel free. I choose to think otherwise.
Absolutely no one has suggested that people working for corporations shouldn't have the right to do whatever they normally have the right to do. They simply say the individual people should be accountable when they violate the law. (And, of course, you don't have the right to violate the law, by definition.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Dear sir or madam,
On behalf of the slashdot.org editors, henceforth refered to as the taco llamas, I am issuing you this notice for a suit to recoup losses due to releasing the trade secret of slashdot content.
good day,
- William Slick ( My friends call me Willie )
Who is the teenage anarchist? The belief that businesses exist solely for profit is cynical at best. That would be as believing that individual humans act only to maximize their future genetic potential.
to deny rights to corporations is to deny rights to individuals
More correctly, to grant rights to corporations is to weaken the rights of individuals.
Due to wealth and size, corporations have the ability to impact and influence issues far more easily then any individual. A perfect example is the SLAPP (Strategis Lawsuits Against Public Participation) suit. These suits are generally baseless countersuits launched by corporations against non-profit organizations or individuals who speak out against, sue, or press charges against corporations who have violated the law or acted unethically, and the only purpose of these suits is to bankrupt the corporation's opponents until they shut up. So tell me how this benefits individual rights.
Another good example is the influence of said corporations on the political systems, internationally and particularly here in the U.S.
The travesty here is that coporations are able to act like 800 pound gorillas in the public arena fue to their equal standing as "individuals" and the fact that so much of what passes for "justice" and "speech" is really just exercising one's wealth. And the loser in this system is the individual.
fuck you.
If I received a notice tomorrow saying that Linux (the kernel) was compromised legally and couldn't be used, I'd start planning to move people to another OS (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, MacOSX, Solaris, etc.)
If I received a similar notice about GNU code, I'd panic. In truth, the FSF and GNU are vastly more important to companies running non-Windows systems than the Linux folks. I'm not running down Linux, but I am very, very thankful that the FSF does own the copyrights and has made a good faith effort prevent their code being polluted.
I don't this this IP is alleged to have been in for years. I think they can get away with that defense. However, they continued to ship, and worse, they are indemnifying and supporting (and presumably collecting fees, or earning past fees) on previous sales of linux. They themselves cannot do that without linux being under the GPL, meaning their stuff is covered. However, there is still a chance they will claim their code is not GPLed, and it would then be SCO that owed punative damages... for violating copyright.
-pyrrho
this whole thing should be revealing to the geeks how important terms are for the law and for laymen.
even more so, RMS has been bleating about assigning copyright to the FSF, which never seemed like a good idea to me. And xemacs forked largely over issues of carefully tracking and assigning copyright. Hmmm, looks right there to. Maybe it's time to understand this repetative attempt to educate a bunch of so called logicians.
-pyrrho
"Sco -vs- IBM is between SCO and IBM." I am not persuaded that it is not between Microsoft and the world.
I have been herding Linux boxes as a way of making a living since '96.
But not Hurding Linux boxes.
2/ Isn't this all about the kernel anyway - which is linux (not gcc, X, openoffice, whatever)?
3/ A suggestion that RMS made some years ago was to call distributions containing Linux "LiGnuX", to state that it is the work of Linus, Gnu and X from the Open Group. That didn't catch on mainly because those that got to name distributions were those that actually put them together, which is why we have RedHat Linux, Slackware Linux etc. We have Debian GNU/Linux because those that actually put the work in to do the distribution chose to call it that. RMS got to name gcc (but not emacs, he didn't start it, but he owns it and forked it away from the maintainer to prove that) and to mangle the language furthur by inventing words like "copyleft", but renaming the work of others for political reasons (no matter how noble it may appear to be) is the privelage of those that control the project. In the political and academic world projects are hijacked by others claiming credit all the time - "Other Buggers Efforts", but things are a bit more transparent here than in a single university department.
4/ Gcc has a vital role in the production of linux, but nowhere near the vital role of the keyboard used to type in the intial lines of code. The keyboard manufacturers don't get naming rights either.
The rest of the article makes perfect sense without the paragraph that claims ownership. It looks like that paragraph was put in to once again push the agenda, as I see it that FSF owns linux.
They would argue that they make no such claim, but that they do have the copyleft,right,left; free (but not free) and not open ownership - or whatever nonsensical twisting of language is being used. All the interviews of RMS that I've read over the last few years can be summed up by him saying - YOUR DICTIONARY IS WRONG, DO AS I SAY NOT AS I DO.
I take the view that there is no merit in SCO, but if they were successful in asserting that they owned rightsin operating systems derived from Unix, they would surely have to continue with the argument in order to assert that all operating systems microsoft(that software house well-known to have adopted Xenix and then moved on to a new operating system re-implementing its functions - windows) produced, SCO had rights in. It would be interesting to read the licence SCO sold for a reported $10M to MS.
These accomplishments continue to pay off today. The benefits of freedom don't stop even though the seminal documents were written almost 30 years ago. Your posts take on a tone of "yeah, but what have you done for me lately?" that comes off as though you think the FSF owes you something.
And what happened when you offered your assistance to the project by porting programs or writing documentation?
The "open" development process that was well established before the Free Software movement began (and thus before the Open Source movement began); the development process that RMS participated in the 1970s when he was hacking code at MIT about the time he had the now-famous incident with the printer software. The development process that comes from assuring people the freedoms to share and modify software--freedoms that were secured because of copylefted free software licenses (such as the GNU GPL) well before the Open Source movement existed? Development labor comes and goes, but other things are important too.
I see code being hacked (on Savannah and on specific projects like the Hurd) and I think it's great that that work is getting done. But even if I put that aside, I have to wonder: so what if the FSF is lobbying too? This doesn't stop us from hacking code if we want to. A lot of the challenges free software users face are political challenges, not calls for more code to be hacked. We need more free software programmers to be aware that there are political forces at work that control their ability to freely hack code.
Digital Citizen
IANAL and all that, but a couple of things are nagging away at me somewhat, and I'd love for someone to put my mind at rest. The first question is this: if we can assume that the fact SCO has distributed its own version of Linux innoculates OSS/Free Software etc. against the charge that it's including proprietary SCO code, is there a chance that maybe there's important code commonly found in Linux distributions that ISN'T in the SCO distribution but which might be part of their UNIX system? Surely in this instance, the existence of SCO Linux would not be a defence?
Following on from this, we might accept that the "derivative works" play doesn't work, because copyright protects the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. However, if the contract with IBM holds that IBM did actually concede that SCO holds the rights to the derivatives in that instance, and then IBM puts that code in Linux distributions, would that not be treated as being much the same as if IBM had just copied over some actual UNIX code, and Linux might again be vulnerable?
Of course, if SCO had also included this code in their Linux distribution, then perhaps it wouldn't matter, but if they hadn't?...
If this negatively impacts you, you currently have little you can do about it unless you have a lot of money. Stop shopping there or doing business with them. Simple.
I think he was talking about doing something that actually makes a difference...
Just because they have wrong you according to your views doesnt give you the right to wreak heavenly vengeance on them, any more than I have the right to punish someone who breaks into my house.
Wrong on both counts. The whole principle of representative government is that we can collectively choose to wreak vengeance on them. Also, in most states, you can when someone breaks in (US specific).
In all instances where business negatively affects citizens, the business should be called to task and made to answer for it's wrongs. Businesses are there to make money. Dont like that? go to some place where they arent allowed to. As i said earlier, they may not precisely follow your own moral rules, but the worlds a big wide place, and if i were you, id stop having a tantrum, and grow up. The worlds not perfect, and neither, it seems, are you.
This gets to the root of the disagreement. The entire concept that business exist only to make money, and have no responsibility beyond that, is a uniquely modern and US centric view. A common view is that businesses exist to make money for the owners and to provide jobs in the community. Other views differ as to specifics, but very few take the point of view that businesses have no responsibility to their employees, neighbors, and the citizens of the country they reside in.
By granting strange rights to corporations under this increase-shareholders-value, to hell with everyone else view, the citizens of the US confer valuable rights and special protections to the corp, and in return receive nothing. We give them protection from liability, they buy influence to remove any protections we have against them. The world is not perfect, and people with the attitude that corporations have no responsibility beyond their own boardroom are a primary reason.
Well I'm the doctor and I say you're dead, so shut up and take it like a man!
Due to wealth and size, corporations have the ability to impact and influence issues far more easily then any individual.
Your reliance on an abstract notion, the corporation, has led to confused thinking. In particular, you overlook the fact that corporations are groups of individuals. To restate your claim without concealing that fact: "Individuals who govern corporations have the ability to impact and influence issues far more easily then any who does not." That statement is simply false; Writers, television and movie celebreties, film directors, politicians and the independently wealthy command influence outside of corporate roles. Owning a ball-bearing factory in Iowa will not make me more influencial that President Bush. Those who own and operate business do not have unique and powerful unfluence, as you allege. Nor does everyone have equal influence. Some people are more popular and successful than others. Get over it.
A perfect example is the SLAPP (Strategis Lawsuits Against Public Participation) suit. These suits are generally baseless countersuits launched by corporations against non-profit organizations or individuals who speak out against, sue, or press charges against corporations who have violated the law or acted unethically, and the only purpose of these suits is to bankrupt the corporation's opponents until they shut up. So tell me how this benefits individual rights.
Nobody will argue for the right to bring illegimate suits because there is no such thing. There is only the right to bring suit and denial of that right. It if for the courts to decide if the suit is legitimate.
I think we can all agree that baseless lawsuits are categorically a bad thing and that they could be prevented by denying the right to bring suit. However, by denying the right to bring suit, we also deny the right to bring justifiable suit. You propose the right to bring justifiable suit be denied to an entire class because some members of that class abuse the right. Yet, that some members of a particular class abuse a right is no justification for denying that right to the entire class. If a black woman killls a homeless man with her car, should we deny all black women the right to drive cars ? If the CEO of a corporation brings unjustifiable suit on behalf of the corporation, should we deny all CEOs the right to bring suit on behalf of corporations ? You are using the misdeeds of particular members of a class to justify prejeduce and discrimination against the entire class.
"So tell me how this benefits individual rights," you ask. The simple answer is that by allowing corporations to bring suit the rights of corporate stakeholds are legitimately defended against threats of injustice. If I own fifty shares of Apple Computer I want Apple Computer to have the right to defend itself in court. I am an individual who stands to lose my right to property, the value of those shares, if Apple suffers financial loss because it is denied the right to legal defense. The collective rights of an organization ultimatley reduce to the individual rights of the its stakeholders and members. Whenver you take away corporate rights you are taking away the rights of individuals.
Another good example is the influence of said corporations on the political systems, internationally and particularly here in the U.S.
The right to free speech does not guarantee the right to be heard. Sean Penn can afford to take out a full page add in the New York Times to express his political views on Iraq. I can not. Some will inevitably have greater influence than others. To regulate speech in such a way that all speakers have equal influence is to supress free speech. The difference between us is that I favor free speech and you favor government-regulated speech.
Was it not Voltaire who said something like "I might disagree with what you are saying, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" ? You on the other hand seem to b
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Since SCO has dug themselves in so deep, and will be sued out of existence for slander from IBM, GNU, Linux, et al. I have a simple solution.
Just turn over now all assets to one of the above mentioned entities.
I'm not confused about anything. I fully agree that my right to free speech is contingent upon you having that same right, and whether I agree with you or not (as I surely do not in this case) I would do nothing to infringe upon your right.
I think where we fundamentally disagree is on what a corporation is.
The law treats a corporation primarily as you have described it: it is a collection of individuals, and inherits the rights of those individuals, gaining personhood in that process.
But a corporation is not a person: it is a thing. It is a piece of property, the result of the efforts of many individuals who have worked to create it, as evidenced by the fact that you, and many others, own pieces of that property. Property does not have rights. But people who own property do.
So while I have no problem with say, Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or whomever, lobbying for laws that would benefit the companies they work for, using their own personal wealth, versus Apple Computer or Microsoft or whatever other corporation using corporate funds to do the same thing.
And on a final note, I do understand as well that the right of free speech does not guarantee the right to be heard. My issue is primarily that speech is too often equated with wealth, which, particularly in relation to political speech, I feel is dangerous. It skews the debate over issues, allowing those with wealth too often to dictate the scope of debate and narrowing the spectrum of ideas. Of course, here's the real kicker: how do you compensate for that in such a way that one does not infringe on the free speech of those with wealth (who I would argue are infringing on the free speech of those without)? I don't have a great answer for that. In terms of political campaigns, contribution limits seem fine to me. Other limits that have been instituted or proposed as campaign finance reform I'm not so fond of, and I don't think that even if they were legal and/or moral, they would have the intended impact of the reformers.
Now, if there's anything that you have failed to understand or are confused about, please feel free to ask.
fuck you.
Bravo