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SCO Awarded UNIX Copyright Regs, McBride Interview
Prizm writes "It seems that SCO is continuing to build up its case for world domination, as today it was awarded U.S. copyright registrations for UNIX System V source code by the U.S. Copyright Office. Shares are up 20%, Novell is nowhere to be found, and SCO is releasing binary, run-only Linux licensing. You can read all about it over in their press release." C|Net is also running an interview with McBride.
Does anybody have info as to how expensive this Linux licensing is going to be? It's quite possible that many companies may just pay the fee instead of going through the time, effort, cost and liability of doing otherwise. It's sad to see SCO actually get rewarded for how they're conducting themselves...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
SCO will hold harmless commercial Linux customers that purchase a UnixWare license against any past copyright violations, and for any future use of Linux in a run-only, binary format.
That's extortion...or some other form of legalese.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
Isn't about time that we as Linux users file a class action lawsuit against SCO for misuse of Linux source? If we demonstrate kernel source commits that date back far enough to show that SCO has known for quite a while that they were selling and distributing Linux with the code that they claim is a problem (and all System V code should not be available from the copyright office since it's been filed) that we would be able to demonstrate failure on their part as a business to properly handle their IP, and to ask the court to release it to the public domain?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
What is the delay in getting SCO to court with IBM so they actually have to SHOW US what they are claiming violates their contract with IBM and / or their IP ?
IANAL, so I might be missing something here, but the sooner they go to court, the better imho, else they will keep pumping out FUD and hyping their stock price.
I'd like to know what code I'm licensing. Yes, I'd like to know what lines...
So, if I take those lines out, I don't need a license from you? Thanks.
After careful thought and ethical consideration, I have come to a conclusion regarding my use of Linux and the SCO license. It is as follows:
Mr. McBride, bite me.
I will not submit to your extortion. I will, however, point it out to my Missouri Attorney State General, for his consideration. In fact, the RICO statute comes to mind.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
Note to any companies thinking of caving on this. According to Cnet, the license being offered is "run-time, binary use".
If you then duplicate this kernel in any way (yes, Virginia, downloading and installing from network or CD for internal use as well) without distributing or making available the contested SCO source under the terms of a GPL license, then regardless of whether you distribute the rest of the source you are breaking the terms of the GPL and violating the copy rights of every other rights owner that has contributed to the linux kernel, and you should expect to hear from them presently, possibly as a class action.
Furthermore, you are also declaring (implicitely) that you believe that IBM distributed without a license, that they violated both SCO's rights and (as a consequence) that they violated the rights of every other contributor as well. If you cave in to SCO, be prepared for IBM's lawyers to come around asking if you'd like to form part of a test case to see how implicit you can be while still libelling someone to their material loss.
I'd suggest that your best bet is to sit tight. You can always pay up if and when IBM lose the copyright case (which they probably won't), by which time the actual contested code will have been made public and rapidly replaced in kernel 2.6 anyway. So you can choose to upgrade for nothing, or you can pay to retain old code while sending a message that IBM are thieves and that you are prepared to cave in to any penny ante playa that sends you an invoice. Your choice.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
When the state of IP law gets to where it is, this kind of thing is bound to happen.
Linux has a radical new licensing model (relatively speaking) that has not been through all the legal machinations yet.
There is still grey area in terms of who owns what. Still, its ridiculous that SCO can try to take hostages here without actually showing any of the infringed on code!
"Guess what? Linux infringes on some code I bought the rights for back in the day. But I can't show it to you. Save yourself some trouble and send me $200 for every computer you have linux installed on."
Troll Like a Champion Today
that there is currently NO CASE for any of this. As far as I can tell, this has not been decided in any court, so any 'copyright violations' are just so much hot air issuing from lawyers' mouths until such time as this goes to court.
Just my $.04
hmmmm?
Remember how long it took to get Microsoft into court, let alone get something vaguely resembling a ruling? Courts are slow. We'll be lucky if this is resolved in 5 years. In the mean time SCO can make a pretty penny on FUD and legal threats to companies. It sucks, but that's the legal system for ya.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Fuck ingenuity, good ideas, communities and generosity.
Just make money with patent / copyright system abuse, and speading FUD about anything thats good for the world...
I'm glad I haven't written any big GPL apps or contributed as much as some to the open source world, as I would be seriously pissed off (and a little upset maybe) that my goodwill and hours spent contributing were being eroded by money grabbing, whiny corporations.
How is that SCO can get a copyright on something that had already had a copyright. I'm still pretty new to the legal history of Unix but didn't ATT/Bell Labs already copyright all of the System V source code. Later to find out illegal BSD code was in there. Has SCO made any significant changes to System V?
Sooner or later if they want this to hold in court, they are going to need to show the source code that has been "copied."
The stock price jumped 15% yesterday and 20% today. I'm thinking to myself that a short term investor might have a good chance to make some money off of SCO. And also any insider for that matter.
If their goal is to be bought out, then the execs naturally want the stock price to be a high as possible when the buyout occurs.
Even if the source code exists (which I doubt), the moment it is revealed it will be out of the Linux kernel. They know this, and so they want to delay as much as they can to be bought out before getting to court.
Any companies paying for a "Linux lisence" before a judgement are stupid and are simply allowing SCO to continue this scam for a bit longer.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
No you mis-read. They're offering a license for the binary, not the binary. If they do, in fact, offer the binary itself, then they are violating the GPL by now also distributing source.
;-)
If, on the other hand they say, "your existing license is invalid, here have another." Then they are in the right. They cannot license the GPLed pieces, but that's fine. You can demonstrate that you received those pieces under the GPL.
It's an ugly use of the GPL, and companies like Red Hat will be 100% screwed by this.
That's ok, though, because the current odds on SCO winning this case are somewhere around the odds of the Red Sox winning the Superbowl right after the Triple Crown
Repeat after me: You can't distribute Linux for 2 months under the GPL *after* claiming it contains your code, and *then* remove it from distribution. It's out there. It's GPLed. They're done. All they have left is a contractual dispute with IBM that affects no one by IBM and SCO.
Oh, and by the way IBM is likely to win that one too.
No, they aren't going to sue. To do so would require them to release the source.
If they had an actual case, they would have shown the soruce code, IBM would have settled with them, and you can be sure as hell that all the infringing code would be rewritted in the next kernel release.
The goal of this lisence program is to con PHB's into sending them some cash to continue what now appears to be a grand stock scheme.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
I still don't understand why the legal system hasn't stepped in; Basically, SCO is saying IBM and all Linux distros are ILLEGAL, and they wave this Sys V copyright in everyone's face, as if that's proof that they own linux. How far can they go? Will they be able to scare people even more, without any kind of legal backing? How is this not libel/slander? Come on IBM, knock these guys down!
It still mystifies me why IBM isn't doing anything at this point. They really do have to defend themselves, or they will start to look guilty, even if the charges are completely baseless (I still don't see how SCO can believe they own linux).
If SCO didnt want to screw with Linux as they claim, they would post the offending code and the opensource world could replace it and move on.
instead SCO is hunting to make more money where they can find it.
Such sweethearts.
Faith in humanity down 44%
No - SCO isn't packaging and selling the kernel. SCO is selling a license allowing users to USE a (precompiled binary) Linux kernel, which (according to SCO) contains SCO's proprietary code.
Distributing said kernel (by anyone including ftp.kernel.org) is apparently illegal if SCO's copyright claims are correct (which they aren't). SCO cannot sell a license allowing the Linux kernel to be distributed unless said license was compatible with the GPL (which it wouldn't be).
If SCO's copyright claims are correct, it is illegal for anyone except the copyright holders (all of them, including SCO, together as a group) to distribute copies of the Linux kernel - copyright law prohibits this (just like it prohibits distribution of copies of Windows XP by anyone other than Microsoft), and the GPL would be void (because SCO's part of the code isn't licensed by the copyright holder under a GPL-compatible license).
IANAL; somebody correct me.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
And it's impossible too: the GPL is incompatible with licensing and run-only-binary-distribution (unless the sourcecode is made available). So SCO can't sell a run-only binary distribution under their licensing terms and any distributor who accepts SCOs licensing terms and imposes them on his customers can't distribute anything either since he would violate the GPL.
Violating the GPL means that it is replaced by normal copyright of all the individuals who contributed to the kernel (we're still only talking about the Linux-kernel here) and you need to make explicit deals with each of them to distribute the kernel-code as a whole. It is more likeley that most of those copyrightholders will sue SCO for infringing on their copyrights by distributing their Linux under a restrictive license, in violation of the GPL and hence without permission.
This is just SCO raising up the ante again spewing propaganda to up their shares another few bucks. On the day their bubble bursts and the shares fall through the floor, i will cheer and gleefully tell all those idiots who bet their money on SCO 0wn1ng Linux, that Linux can't be 0wn3d and never will be.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
This is the beginning of a stream of events, that eventually will be known as the Great GPL War.
A company can not claim ownership of a few lines of code, and than steal millions of GPL-ed lines, package them and sell them. This is outrageous.
FSF is forced to react on this one. GPL is going to court.
regards
PiCz
------- Look mum! I have posted another Slashdot comment! --------
never sounded so good... :)
So what are the odds that Stallman is secretly enjoying this while toiling away at the hurd?
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
You do not understand the arrogance of McBride and his brethren. He has claimed in interviews that all of Linux, and every other UNIX clone, is a derivative of UNIX, whether the code was developed from scratch or not. He even hinted that Windows was not immune to this, that the license bought by Microsoft did not protect them from being sued for violating SCO rights concerning UNIX.
Infuriate left and right
It grants rights not given by normal copyright law, upon certain conditions that you must agree to to get those rights. If you don't agree to thsoe conditions, or violate those conditions after agreeing to the GPL, then standard copyright law applies. That means that you've violated standard copyright law.
Very simply, there is no way that the GPL can be defeated in a court-room. But, if it is, that might be good. If the GPL is invalidated, then ALL EULAs would necessarily be invalidated, as they take away rights granted by standard copyright law.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
is how much SCO upper management has made off selling an artificially inflated stock (see for yourself). That is assuming that major insider trading activities are not being concealed some how, which, considering the ethical principles of the people involved, is a dubious assumption. Most of this stock selling is in lots under 6k of shares, which shows a concious effort to avoid scrutiny from the SEC.
Enron might have lied about large numbers, however, I am convinced that SCO represents the most a company has ever multiplied the perception of its own worth through blatant lies. This has either exposed something horrible about our financial system or the complete incompetence in this area on the part of investors (probably both . . .).
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Isn't there one thing for certain: Linus owns the trademark on Linux. Even if they did own the code (which they don't), they can't market it as Linux after Linus says to stop. He'll be needing a lawyer soon. His inaction to date was waranted - he said it was between IBM and SCO. Now it should be nice and personal.
In the first place, copyrights are not patents. Independently-arrived-at code does not infringe on "copyright" rights, which only affect the right to make copies, not independently-arrived at code.
Secondly, we all know how trustworthy the USPTO is **bullshit**.
Third, even if the copyright is held to be valid, they still have the problem of proving that current implementations contain copied code (not just that it's identical, but that the copying, if any, went from their crap to Linux and not the other way around).
Fourth, we have thw whole issue of them having released gpl-ed versions of Linux, so any code that was copied is still okay.
Fifth, they don't have the right to license Linux binaries, 'cause they don't own those rights. The gpl is quite clear on this. Either the gpl'ed software can be used free and clear, or it can't be used at all.
In summary, this means absolutely nothing, except that SCO may end up having to fork over any monies obtained for trying to "license" gpl-ed code under non-gpl terms.
Dear Linux Community, I have a claim on intellectual property included within the Linux product. If you want to use Linux please send your checks payable to creep73.
Proof..... Well that is forth coming. You can send the checks now though. If you wait for proof I will be increasing the price and will be holding you liable for those months you didn't pay.
Thanks
Nice doing business with you.
Creep73
It is amazing that the news resulted in a 20% jump in the stock. If I am not mistaken, the Copyright office awards a copyright registration just about anytime someone sends them an envelope with $30 and an attached piece of paper.
Registering a copyright is pretty much like a cat pissing on a couch to say "this is mine" and I will scratch cats who say otherwise. Actual ownership is a different question that gets resolved in courts.
If anyone else has a documented claim to any of the work that SCO just filed, then SCO's filing for a copyright puts them in a difficult position.
I have to admit the SCO news report is amazing. Basically with the investment of half hours work on the part of lawyer ($180), a days work for a filing clerk ($80), an envelope ($1), a express mail stamp ($3.70) and a $30.00 filing fee, they got a 20% boost in their stock. You gotta love the stock market.
We should get the SEC to look at the insider trading for the stock, if there were any insider purchases before this phenomenal scam and any insider selling after the scam, maybe we could get their theiving arses hauled before the judge.
Actually, the way to make SCOX (SCO's stock symbol) drop like a rock is to sell that stock short. Short interest has risen along with the price of SCOX and if you have a few thousand to spare, sell that puppy. If you believe that the lawsuit is without merit and will collapse soon, driving the stock down to $1 is a good way to encourage a new revenue and business model.
The Method: If as many people as possible go onto stock boards, and post their negative feelings about SCO, and their own speculations as to what the outcome of the battle with IBM will be, Buyers will begin to flee from the stock.
/. community adding one more, especially since it won't shape their ideas more than any of the others.
Posting negative views of a company in large numbers on stock boards is a very old (relatively speaking) tactic that ceased to work years ago. If you post vehemently negative views about a company on stock boards, you will just be harassing innocent people that have likely already educated themselves on the subject and formed their own opinions. They do not need, nor will they enjoy or tolerate, your anti-SCO spam. They have to deal with enough whiny pseudo-activist screeds against whichever company some niche group hates already, they don't need the
Please find a more mature tactic than spam.
Even if Microsoft were to come out and openly show that they're the ones behind this, they don't win.
How many companies have ever, in the history of IP, won an IP infringement case against IBM?
Hint: None.
SCO contends that Linux could not have gotten the "enterprise" features without IBM copying Unix code and pasting it into the Linux kernel. That is the only real claim I have heard (read).
A couple of questions I have. If I am using linux in desktop mode on a single cpu, how can I possibly be using the actual features that they claim were necessary to scale beyond 4 processors?
I also have a client that is running a 4 year old Linux distro on a closed network that just runs night and day. How could this possibly infringe since it predates the IBM kernel contributions that SCO claims started this bruhaha? Yet they seem to want a license fee for any vintage of running Linux.
SCO wants to distribute a binary only Unixware runtime that can execute Linux binaries, presumably as the only "legal and non-infringing" platform for doing so. How can they completely incorporate this capability without taking any GPL'd code and ignoring the license?
My opinion after dwelling on this for a while is this:
1 - SCO is trying to overthrow the entire Linux movement that threatens their struggling business. They are scaring the heck out of businesses that currently run or were thinking about deploying Linux. They are not allowing any access to information about their claimed code swap. This means they have no desire to co-exist, but to supercede completely. Their steps so far support this opinion, future moves may change this opinion. Kernel coders have expressed great interest in learning which features supposedly infringe on SCO IP so they can be replaced. It seems that SCO has been completely unwilling to inform them without having them sign an NDA that would then prevent them from fixing any actual code infringment.
2 - SCO is attempting to openly break and defy the terms of the (L)GPL. If they can do so, then they weaken it tremendously and encourage others to dissent too. They are also attempting to change established precedent concerning IP infringment and end user rights. Way back in the early 1990's Microsoft stole compression technology from Stac and had to pay them a large settlement. The outcome for consumers that had already purchased the infringing product? They got to keep possession and continue to use the product they had payed for. Some people got free upgrades, but the ones that chose to keep using the original MS stealware didn't have to get an additional license from Stac to remain legal. Microsoft also countersued claiming that Stac had illegaly reverse engineered part of MS-DOS to enable them to seemlessly integrate their product below the filesystem level. MS won the counter-suit and a smaller $13million award. Customers that had purchased Stac products still had the legal right to use them too. This is because the customer or end user wasn't involved in the actual theft and only indirectly get benefit from the illegal acts on both sides. This precedent holds true in all of the cases that come easily to mind, but there may be exceptions. What the freak is SCO trying to pull?
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
However, don't, don't, don't send me your names if you want to sue SCO, please. The email address I have posted at Slashdot is /dev/null, and I am presently (but hopefully not for too much longer) working for a giant law firm where I can't just decide to take a case if I want to. But if I were not under that limitation, I would be very interested in talking with anyone who became the target of a cease-and-desist letter from SCO. I'm sure there are others with similar interests who are not under the same professional constraints, and I suggest that anyone who gets a SCO Linux nastygram consider contacting www.chillingeffects.org and posting the letter there, whereupon students and professors at various law schools may offer free commentary and legal advice. It's my understanding that some victims of improper copyright abuse have obtained lawyers as a result of posting on chillingeffects (although I don't think the site actually offers representation).
I want to correct (or I guess just put a different gloss on) one statement that has been made in the discussion. The GPL's comments regarding standing to sue are probably the law in most jurisdictions. However, in California where I am licensed, there is a statute known as Section 17200 that gives its citizens broad standing to sue for unfair business practices on behalf of the public interest. Although the remedies would be limited to disgorgement of profits (paying back anyone who paid for a SCO Linux license) and injunctive relief (an order that SCO stop asking people to pay for licenses, claiming they own Linux, distributing binary-only, etc.), the interest of the open source community in continuing its free development and use of Linux seems in my view to be exactly the type of public interest this (oft-misused) statute was designed to protect. Moreover, attorney fees can be awarded under 17200, so I feel certain that if the news is well-disseminated, some lawyer not currently wearing the golden handcuffs (as I am) will take up the banner.
No, no, no. This is not a sig.
SCO themselves did not insert the code. They simply redistributed a source package which already contained their code before it came into their possession. A judge is probably going to look at this claim and dismiss it outright.
I disagree. It's highly unlikely that a judge would dismiss this outright, unless some other defendant didn't show up.
This is true; in fact they are still distributing the code, although this may be accidental. I'm sure you can find the SRPM link somewhere around here. Let me explain why this doesn't matter:
I'm still waiting for your explanation of why it doesn't matter.
SCO is going to claim that they were not the ones to insert their proprietary code into Linux, IBM was. Therefore, it isn't their responsibility to take it out
This is completely irrelevant. It doesn't matter who put it there, and it doesn't matter who's responisibility it is to remove it. What does matter is that while it's there, NOBODY CAN DISTRIBUTE IT, INCLUDING SCO. The only thing giving SCO the right to distribute the Linux kernel is the GPL, which SCO is implicitly agreeing to by continuting to distribute the code.
Simple three part question.
Is SCO aware of the requirements of the GPL?
Is SCO aware of "their" code in the kernel?
IS SCO DISTRIBUTING IT?
The answer to all three of these questions is YES
Therefore, it's highly likely that a judge would simply throw out SCO's assertions that the GPL doesn't apply. THE ONLY THING GIVING SCO THE RIGHT TO DISTRIBUTE THE KERNEL IS THE GPL. AS SCO IS CONTINUTING TO DISTRIBUTE "THEIR" CODE, THEY ARE AGREEING TO THE GPL.
it is also a violation for every single other Linux distro
What "other distributions" are doing is irrelevant - "other distributions" are not claiming that they have proprietary code, and "other distribitons" are not suing to stop one another from distributing the kernel.
SCO can easily claim that it is literally impossible to legally replace the code; the kernel is so tainted now that any replacement code would simply be another violation. The only solution is for these companies to pay SCO what they owe.
Bullshit. You're trying to tell me that something can not be replaced? AT ALL ?!?!?! What have you been smoking?
And even if it's "impossible" to legally replace the code or not, the fact is that SCO hasn't told anybody where it is even when explicitly requested. By not doing so, SCO is saying that "their" code is worthless to them.
You have a very long troll - it's too bad you're not smart enough to actually make it convincing.
Having just spoken with a corporate attorney about this (said attorney happens to be my father), I was told that only one thing really matters in this case:
What is the dimension of copyrightability or of patentability, as it applies to computer software?
This is to say, what can SCO claim it had patented or copyrighted. Narrowly, one could say that SCO's protection applies only to the letter of its source code, not to any ancillary ideas. But SCO could counter this claim, saying that its protections extended to the UNIX "user experience." Such things as the command syntax of the Bourne shell, the Shell/Kernel design, the presence of standard utilities like awk and make, or even the something as nebulous as the "shape of the integrated whole" (the experiential architecture of a UNIX system and what it "feels" like when it is operated) could, in fact, be claimed as intellectual property.
One should realize, in defense of SCO, that all essentially all early UNIX and UNIX-like technology was developed by a small team at AT&T Bell Labs, and clearly AT&T didn't pay and fund that team simply to write code. No, that team was funded by-and-large to craft an operating system, a "user-experience," "application programming interface experience" and "overall system architecture." Indeed, these latter ideas were far more important (and valuable) than the UNIX source code itself. AT&T forced Novell, as Novell later forced SCO, to pay good money for the rights to these ideas, so if I were SCO and had paid some $500 million for the rights to such ideas, I too would be rather perturbed should an individual and an organization (Linus and the FSF) come along with the vision of creating "a complete Unix-like operating system which is free software" (source: FSF website, GNU project homepage), this is to say, creating a product that uses all of my policy, interface specification, and design ideas, without rightfully paying for them.
Everyone here should realize that Linus, RMS, and their ilk simply wrote programs that implemented policy, architecture, and user-experience specifications and ideas developed, at the cost of millions of dollars, some twenty-years before at AT&T Bell Labs. That SCO later paid millions for those ideas, something that people here seem to laugh at, should not, in my mind, be taken lightly.